(Wall Street Journal) – Kazen, a jovial 61-year-old, is a pioneer in this kind of court-supervised treatment, which is designed to help people with the most severe mental illnesses who have already been jailed or treated in emergency rooms several times. He typically encounters them after they have been detained in hospitals, considered to be a danger to themselves or others.

For these people, Kazen says there are few long-term options, as a decadeslong push to deinstitutionalize has closed old mental hospitals and left people waiting months or years for a bed to open up. It is either help them take their medication or let them go—“and I’ll see them in the revolving door,” Kazen says. (Read More)